POEM: An Anti-lamentation

I will tell you the story of my escape, the whole

thing, from start to end, until I am naked.

Starting at the beginning, from the keening that my

captivity evoked, to the dizzying freedom once unshackled.

I bake freedom into the bread that I share. 

I come to the party with both hands open, hiding nothing.

My goal is to let my last days be ones of depletion, where

everything is exhausted, ignoring the urge to lock doors,

until doubt wanes, until it flits and fails, this same doubt

that rides the subways with me, that eats in the same

sandwich shops I do. I am wrong more often than I am right.

It’s just a state of being, like binary one or zero, on or off.

It’s not who I really am. Nor is my body me.  Nor my face.

Nor my bones. Nor my lack of grace. These are ghost stories

once told around a campfire.

I am a mystery, so I better start acting like one! I drop a buck

into a beggar’s cup and push every reason out of my head

why this is a bad idea.  Instead, I give naiveté the keys

to the car, let him drive a while. I can dine with the ridicule.

Mostly, we are wished-upon comets, circling the sun

every two-hundred years, waited for, but barely noticed,

trailing dust in the shape of a smile.

Brother, the lonely roads are the ones worth taking so let’s

walk them for no reason, and barefoot. I want to touch everything,

however transient, to fill the warp and woof of a life

with a generous urge. In the dark space between atoms is

where God awaits my choice in anticipation.